Spinach: One of My Favorite Things

My favorite Muppets are Statler and Waldorf.

My favorite Disney movie is "The Love Bug".

My favorite thing to wear is a suit-- preferably a dark blue one, three-piece, like they used to wear when fine clothes were fine.

My favorite nickname for my wife (and I have LOTS) is "Buddy", even though it was Richard Nixon's favorite nickname for Pat. He may have been an asshole, but she was his buddy, and I like that.

My favorite thing to watch on YouTube are old outtakes of Tim Conway busting up Harvey Korman. That's real kooo-ala.

My favorite thing to do in the middle of the woods on a secluded hike is sing Gilbert & Sullivan patter songs with Mrs. Apron at full tilt.

My favorite songs are sad-- without exception. Folk songs, tunes that are mournful and revolve around loss or despair or death-- ships sinking, people dying, lovers who cannot be together.

My favorite blog posts to write are introspective, and quiet. It feels like less of a performance. Not that I'm not funny. I am, I guess. It's just that bringing out that part of me feels like work. And nobody likes work. That's why people play the lottery.

My favorite American musicals, “Assassins” and “Into the Woods” were written by Stephen Sondheim. I think he's a genius, and most Americans who write musicals, well, aren’t.

My favorite people, mostly, all died over a hundred years ago. I don't know what it is about people, but they seemed to be much better before we started videotaping them all the time.

My favorite television personality is Andy Rooney, but I haven't watched "60 Minutes" in years because I'm scared that, if I do, he's going to die. And I don't want Andy Rooney to die. He once wrote that he only hoped immortality for two souls, his mother and his dog. How can you not love that guy? He's all acerbic, but I'll bet that's just work. He's just a big mushpot, like me.

I once wrote Andy Rooney an email, in 2004, seeking his advice on how to become a writer. You know, a real one. I was astonished when I opened my email later that day to see he'd written back. It had a fair amount of typos, so I knew he'd written it himself, on a computer, which he hates. He likes typewriters, like me. Here's what he wrote:

"Advice is spinach. It doesnt help. People who give it enjoy doing it butusually dont know what theyre talking about. When I was trying to make aliving writing magazine articles, I read a lot of magazines to see what sortof thing they were using and took my cue from that. I sold a lot of magazinearticles but Id write one Id hope to sell to The Saturday Evening Post for$1500 and it usually ended up in something called PAGEANT or CORONET for$300. Thanks for yout good letter. Sorry I cant help."

The thing is, of course, he did help.

"Thanks for yout good letter."

That helped.

I got praise from Andrew Aitken Rooney.

I may not have become, and I may never become a professional writer-- if that is indeed something I still want. But that's okay. Because I have lots of eccentric tastes, like writers do. Lots of odd preferences and likes and proclivities, and they all congregate around me to help make me who or what I am. Whatever that is.

Oh-- and that email is one of my favorite things, too.

I Didn't Throw Up

Although I don't know for sure, because the Obamas haven't invited me to dinner at the White House (yet) apparently, the family engages in a nightly (or however "nightly" they're all together at the table) activity called "Roses & Thorns." In the activity, while Secret Service Agents are making sure terrorists don't spring out of the mashed potato bowl, the Obama family members share one crappy and one happy thing about their day. I think, upon reading that previous sentence, they ought to rename the activity "Crappy Happy" but they probably have too much class for that.

Which is nice for them.

My wife and I, who have far less class than the Obamas, (at least, I do), engage in the practice "One Good Thing" or O.G.T., if we're feeling abbrevatory. The title of the activity is pretty self-explanatory-- and it differs from the Obamas' practice because it obviously leaves out the one shitty thing, which is fine with me, because, usually, there's too many shitty things to narrow it down to just one. Most of the time, it's all I can do to find the O.G.T.

And that's kind of the point.

It doesn't have to be something big, or powerful, or even particularly meaningful. It can be that you found a crumpled up dollar in the pocket of a jacket that you haven't worn since last November. Or it could be that some random asshole smiled at you on the street (that hasn't happened to me [yet]) or that two Big-Kat Bars fell out of the snack machine even though you only paid for one.

I mean-- could there be a better O.G.T. than that? And, no, guys cannot have multiple orgasms, so our perspective "good things" is admittedly limited.

My wife and I have been doing O.G.T. for years, and I have spread the practice to friends, and students, and, if I'm feeling particularly bold, coworkers. I haven't tried it with the mental patients with whom I work, and I'm not sure that I'm going to, because, for some of them, a good thing could be "I fucked my cupcake this morning real hard" or "The voices sang to me in German today" or "I didn't shank my roommate in the jugular with a broken mini-golf pencil" and, really, there are things that I just don't need/want to hear.

Even if, to some people, they're good things.

Sometimes, oftentimes, I find myself really digging for that O.G.T.-- digging like a motherfucker, and while that may sound depressing, actually I think it's kind of good. It would be unfortunate to get swept up in the superficial, the inconsequential, your day being awash with asskissers who do nothing but massage your ego and whisper sweet somethings into your ear. Sometimes, searching for that one diamond in the pile of poo is worth the effort, if you can stand the smell.

Andy Breckman is a singersongwriter whom I particularly enjoy. You know him as the co-creator and the executive producer of "Monk," but I didn't watch Monk, so I only know him as a singersongwriter. If you haven't heard of his music, (and chances are you haven't) check out his album "Proud Dad." It's fucking hilarious. He can only play about three chords and all his songs sound the same, but they're very funny, and honest, and sad. And that's kind of how I like to flatter myself-- with that description: funny, honest, and sad. And I can't even play the guitar half as bad as Andy Breckman.

Anyway, Andy sings a song called "I Had a Good Day." I love this song. It's a sing-a-long, and every year I worked at summer camp, I sang it with the kids. They loved it. At least, I think they loved it. Here's how it starts:

"I'm doin' okay,
I had a good day.
I gotta say,
I had a real good day.

I didn't throw up!
I didn't throw up!
About a quarter to four,
I almost threw up,
But I didn't throw up,
I had a real good day!"

I'm pretty sure that, today, the fact that I was able to see a four hundred pound black woman walk down the hallway with her ass hanging out, a 50-year-old cocaine addict with an adult diaper sticking up out of his pants with his shirt tucked into the diaper, a completely toothless (except one huge upper fang) man with mental retardation throwing up into a trashcan, without throwing up is my One Good Thing.

What's yours?